Group takes Okla. ‘personhood’ challenge to Supreme Court

An eight-cell embryo is shown three days after insemination in this undated Eastern Virginia Medical School handout.

AP Photo/Eastern Virginia Medical School, FILE

Although the Oklahoma Supreme Court stopped a “personhood” ballot initiative from going forward earlier this year, its supporters have filed suit to take their challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Personhood USA, an organization that argues embryos should have rights equal to people, thus outlawing abortion, was working to gather enough signatures to put personhood on the ballot this fall in November when the court struck it down, saying a previous case—Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)—had already ruled such an argument unconstitutional.

Now Personhood USA is arguing that Oklahoma’s decision violated the first and 10th amendment rights of the people to petition and the states and citizens to determine laws not already granted in the Constitution.

As a movement, personhood has not been very successful either getting on the ballot or getting the public to vote with them once it is on the ballot. It failed in several states already this year. It does, however, have a stated objective to aggressively continue pursuit of its particular pro-life platform.